Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (11 page)

W
hen Henry told Keiko about his wild ride down South King the night before, she burst out laughing. She searched the lunch line and giggled almost as hard when she saw Denny Brown appear. He wore a defeated scowl, like an angry, whipped mutt. His cheeks and nose were scabbed over from where his face had skidded along the pavement after his fall.

Denny disappeared into the herd of hungry kids. They stampeded by, making their normal abnormal faces as Henry and Keiko dished up a gray mess that Mrs Beatty soberly called Spam à la king. The bubbling sauce had a subtle green tint to it, almost metallic in its sheen, glossy like a fish’s eyeball.

All week long, they scraped out the empty steamer trays and dumped the leftovers in the garbage. Mrs Beatty didn’t believe in saving leftovers. Ordinarily, she had Henry and
Keiko place the food scraps in separate buckets, to be retrieved by local pig farmers, who used the dregs as slop each night. This time, though, the leftovers went in the regular garbage cans. Even pigs have standards.

By Monday, lunch was back to the same routine. In the storage room, Henry and Keiko sat on a pair of upturned milk crates, splitting a can of peaches and talking about what had happened at the Black Elks Club the night that Keiko’s English teachers had been arrested and how the curfews were affecting everyone. The papers didn’t say much. What they did say about the arrests got lost in the big headline of the week – that General MacArthur had miraculously escaped the Philippines, proclaiming: ‘I came out of Bataan and I shall return.’ Buried beneath that news was a small column about the arrest of suspected
enemy agents
. Maybe that was what Henry’s father had been talking about. The conflict that had seemed so far away suddenly felt closer than ever.

Especially with bullies like Chaz, Carl Parks, and Denny Brown still out there waging war on the playground. Even though no one ever wanted to be the Japs or the Jerrys, they usually made some little kid play the enemy, hounding him mercilessly. If they ever got tired of it, Henry never saw it. But here, in this dusty storage closet, there was shelter, and company.

Keiko smiled at Henry. ‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said.

He looked at her expectantly, offering the last peach, which she speared with a fork and ate in two big bites. They shared drinks of the sweet, syrupy juice that was left.

‘It’s a surprise, but I’m not going to show it to you until after school.’

It wasn’t his birthday, and Christmas had been months ago; still, a surprise was a surprise. ‘Is this because I’m storing all your photographs? If so, no need, I’m happy to—’

Keiko cut him off. ‘No, this is for taking me to the Black Elks Club with you.’

‘And almost getting us thrown in jail,’ Henry muttered sheepishly.

He watched her purse her lips and consider that comment, then dismiss his concern, beaming at Henry. ‘It was worth it.’

Together they enjoyed a moment of silence that was interrupted by a knock on the half-open door. Scientific proof that time sometimes passes all too quickly.

‘Shoofly, shoo.’ That was Mrs Beatty’s way of telling them to get a move on. Time to get back to their classes. After lunch she usually thundered back into the kitchen, working her teeth with a fresh toothpick, sometimes holding a copy of
Life
magazine – rolled up like a billy club or a fish bat. She used it to swat flies, which she left lying there, their flattened guts smeared on the metal kitchen counters.

Henry held the door for Keiko, who let her hair down and headed back to her classroom. Henry followed, looking back as Mrs Beatty settled in with her magazine. It was last week’s issue. The cover read ‘Bathing Suits in Fashion.’

After school they pounded erasers, wiped desks, and mopped the bathrooms. Henry kept asking about Keiko’s surprise. She coyly deferred. ‘Later. I’ll show you on the way home.’

Instead of walking south toward Nihonmachi, Keiko led him north, to the heart of downtown Seattle. Every time
Henry asked where they were going, she’d just point to the massive Rhodes Department Store on Second Avenue. Henry had been there a few times with his parents – only on those special occasions when they needed something important, or something that couldn’t be found in Chinatown.

Rhodes was a local favorite. Being in the massive six-story building was like taking a life-size stroll through the Sears catalog, but with a certain charm and real-world grandeur. Especially with its massive pipe organ, which was played during lunchtime and dinner, special concerts for hungry shoppers – at least it had been until a few months ago, when the organ had been dismantled and moved to the new Civic Ice Arena over on Mercer.

Henry followed Keiko to the audio section, a corner on the second floor with cabinet radios and phonographs. There was an aisle with long cedar racks of disk records – which to Henry felt lighter and more fragile than shellac records. Shellac supplies had been limited, apparently – another conscript of the war effort – so vinyl was now being used for the latest hit music, like ‘String of Pearls’ by Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw’s ‘Stardust.’ Henry loved music. But his parents had only an old Victrola. I doubt it’d even play any of these newer records, Henry thought.

Keiko stopped in front of one of the rows of records. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said, taking Henry’s hands and moving them to his face.

Henry looked around first, then complied. He felt a little awkward but covered his eyes anyway, standing in the middle of the record aisle. He heard Keiko shuffling in the racks and couldn’t resist peeking through his fingers, watching her from
behind for a moment as she flipped through rows of records. He squeezed his eyes shut as she turned around, holding something.

‘Open them!’

Before his eyes was a shiny vinyl record in a white paper sleeve. The simple, pressed label read: ‘Oscar Holden & the Midnight Blue, The Alley Cat Strut.’

Henry was speechless. His jaw hung open, but no sound came out.

‘Can you believe it?’ She gushed with pride. ‘This is our song, the one he played for us!’

Holding it in his hands, he couldn’t believe it. He’d never known an actual recording artist – never met one in person. The only famous person he’d ever seen was Leonard Coatsworth, the last man on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge before it bucked and bent and crashed into the water. Coatsworth had been on the newsreels, walking down the middle of the twisting bridge. Henry saw him ride by in the Seafair Parade and thought he was just an ordinary-looking fool. Not a performer like Oscar Holden.

Sure, Oscar had been famous on South Jackson, but this was real fame. Fame you could buy and hold in your hand. As he tilted the perfect record, he looked at the grooves and tried to hear the music again, the swinging sound of the horn section, Sheldon on saxophone. ‘I can’t believe it.’ Henry spoke in awe.

‘It just came out. I saved up to buy it. For you.’

‘For us,’ Henry corrected. ‘Besides, I can’t even play it, we don’t even have a record player.’

‘Then come to my house. My parents want to meet you anyway.’

The thought of her parents wanting to meet him left him feeling flattered and shocked. Like an amateur fighter being given a shot at a prizefight. Excitement, custom-fit with doubt and anxiety. Fear too. His parents probably would have nothing to do with Keiko. Were her parents that different? What could they possibly think of him?

Henry and Keiko took the record to the checkout counter. A middle-aged woman with long blond hair pulled back under a clerk’s hat kept busy counting change at the register, sorting it into a larger tray.

Keiko reached up and set the record on the counter, then opened a small purse and pulled out two dollars – the price of a new record.

The blond clerk kept counting.

Patiently, Henry and Keiko waited for the clerk to finish counting what was in her till. She made detailed notations of the amounts, writing on a sheet of paper.

While he and Keiko waited, another woman came up behind them, holding a small windup wall clock. Henry watched in confusion as the clerk took the clock, over his and Keiko’s heads, and rang it up. The clerk took the money and handed the change back, and the clock, in a large green Rhodes shopping bag.

‘Is this counter open?’ Keiko asked.

The clerk just looked around for another customer.

‘Excuse me, ma’am, I’d like to buy this record, please.’

Henry was becoming more annoyed than the clerk looked – her hip cocked, her jaw set. She leant down and whispered to them, ‘Then why don’t you go back to your own neighborhood and buy it?’

Henry had been given dirty looks before but he’d never experienced something like this. He’d heard about things like this in the South. Places like Arkansas or Alabama, but not Seattle. Not the Pacific Northwest.

The clerk stood there, her fist dug into her hip. ‘We don’t serve people like you – besides, my husband is off fighting …’

‘I’ll buy it,’ Henry said, putting his ‘I am Chinese’ button on the counter next to Keiko’s two dollars. ‘I said, I’ll buy it, please.’

Keiko looked ready to cry or storm out. Her fists rested on the counter, two white-knuckled balls of frustration.

Henry stared at the clerk, who looked confused, then annoyed. She relented, snatching the two dollars and flicking his button to one side. She handed the record to him, without a bag or a receipt. Henry insisted on both, afraid she’d yell for store security and report that they had stolen the record. She scratched a price on a yellow receipt and stamped it ‘paid’ – shoving it at Henry. He took it, thanking her anyway.

He put his button in his pocket along with the slip of paper. ‘C’mon, let’s go,’ he said to Keiko.

On the long walk home, Keiko stared blankly ahead. The joy of her surprise had popped like a helium balloon, loud and sharp, leaving nothing to hold but a limp string. Still, Henry held the record and tried his best to calm her down. ‘Thank you, this is a wonderful surprise. This is the best present I’ve ever been given.’

‘I don’t feel very giving, or grateful. Just angry,’ Keiko said. ‘I was born here. I don’t even speak Japanese. Still, all these people, everywhere I go … they hate me.’

Henry found a smile and waved the record in front of her, handing it to her. Seeing it made her forget. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

She looked at the record as they walked. ‘I guess I’m used to the teasing at school. After all, my dad says they’re just dumb kids that would pick on weak boys and little girls no matter what part of town they’re from. That being Japanese or Chinese just makes the heckling that much easier – we’re easy targets. But this far from home, in a grown-up part of town …’

‘You’d think grown-ups would act different,’ Henry finished her sentence, knowing from his own experience that sometimes grown-ups could be worse. Much worse.

At least we have the record, Henry thought. A reminder of a place where people didn’t seem to care what you looked like, where you were born, or where your family was from. When the music played, it didn’t seem to make one lick of difference if your last name was Abernathy or Anjou, Kung or Kobayashi. After all, they had the music to prove it.

On the way home, Henry and Keiko debated who should keep the record.

‘It’s a gift from me to you. You should keep it, even if you can’t play it. Someday you’ll be able to,’ she insisted.

Henry thought Keiko should have it since she had a record player that could play the new vinyl disks.

‘Besides,’ he argued, ‘my mother is always around, and I’m not sure if she’d approve – because my father doesn’t like modern music.’

In the end, Keiko relented and accepted it. Because her
parents liked jazz, but also because she realized how late they were going to be if they didn’t hurry home.

They walked as fast as they could along the scenic waterfront, their feet crunching on the occasional fragment of clamshell that littered the sidewalk. Hovering seabirds had dropped the shells whole, cracking them on the pavement so they could swoop down and feast on the squishy, meaty contents. To Henry the splattered shellfish just looked gross. He was wary of the messy sidewalk, almost to the point of distraction. So much so that he almost didn’t notice a thin line of soldiers near the ferry terminal.

He and Keiko were forced to stop on the north side of the terminal, along with dozens of cars and a handful of people milling about the sidewalk. Most looked more curious than annoyed. A few looked happy. Henry didn’t understand the commotion.

‘Must be a parade, I think. I hope so,’ Henry said. ‘I love parades. The Seafair Parade was even better than the Chinese New Year’s one on Main Street.’

‘What day is it?’ Keiko asked, handing Henry the record, breaking out the sketchbook she kept in her book bag.

She sat on the curb and began drawing the scene in pencil. There was a row of soldiers in uniform, bayoneted rifles slung across their shoulders. All looked crisp, civil, and polite. Efficient even, Henry thought. The ferry
Keholoken
sat moored in the background, moving almost imperceptibly with the ebb and flow of the dark green waters of the frigid Puget Sound.

Henry thought about it. ‘It’s March 30
^th
– no holiday I know of.’

‘Why are they here? That’s the Bainbridge Island ferry,
isn’t it?’ Keiko tapped her pencil on her cheek in confusion.

Henry agreed. Looking down at Keiko’s drawing, he was more impressed than ever. She was good. Better than good, she had real talent.

Then they heard a whistle.

‘It must be starting,’ Henry said. Looking around, he saw there were more people lining the streets, frozen, as if waiting for a broken red light to change.

Another whistle and a long line of people began walking off the ferry. Henry could hear the rhythmic
plink-plank
of leather shoes on the metal ramp. In a neat row they ambled across the street and south – where to, Henry couldn’t fathom. As best he could figure, they were heading in the direction of Chinatown, or maybe Nihonmachi.